Deltarune Ch. 4 Secret Boss(es) + Spoilers

To make up for Chapter 3’s lack of a narrative focus, it feels like Chapter 4 spends almost its entire playtime BOMBARDING you with new information about the characters and the world. Seriously, aside from certain gameplay segments in the Dark Sanctuaries that give us a break every now and then, it felt like we were constantly getting hit with new details after new details without much in-between.

Going through this Chapter chronologically, I think the first big things to talk about are the events at the Holiday household, as well as this Chapter’s continuation of the Weird/Snowgrave Route that was established in Chapter 2. God, there’s so much that happens here. From Kris ripping the SOUL out from them giving us a chance to explore the house, to the Tom and Jerry-ass shenanigans that we get into with Kris while controlling the SOUL, to the conversations between Susie and Noelle that deepen their relationship with one another as well as question Kris’ behavior, to overhearing Kris’ mysterious phone call, to the discovery that Asgore seems to be working for the Holidays and has some kind of mysterious motivation that he needs to stay focused on, all capped off with the goosebumps-inducing reveal and introduction of Noelle’s mother, the frigid Carol Holiday.

While I loved the Suselle conversations a lot, and I am pretty curious about what Asgore’s doing here, my thoughts regarding this portion mainly focus on everything that has to do with Kris, their relationship with us, the Player, and just… what the hell they’re doing whenever they trap the SOUL and escape our gaze. It leaves me feeling such a large variety of negative emotions. I feel really guilty now whenever I take control of Kris. It makes me want to be more considerate of Kris’ point of view when making decisions, and try to pick things that line up with their desires rather than mine. However, there’s also the fact that based on the phone call, Kris is working with someone who is trying to impede our efforts to open the Shelter and rescue Undyne. The ending of the Chapter when you finish it on a Weird Route save indicates that the person Kris is talking to is Carol, which would mean that the two of them have some sort of partnership, but we don’t know why or to what end. Either way, Carol and Kris are trying to stop us from saving a life, so it's highly likely their intentions aren’t especially well-meaning. Maybe maintaining control of Kris for as much as possible IS what’s best in the end. It’s really hard to say for sure, but what I do know is that this is an absolutely brilliant moral dilemma, one that Toby Fox has clearly put an immense amount of thought into, and I’ve got nothing but the highest levels of praise for it.

This entire sequence at the Holiday house was, without a doubt, INGENIOUS, and in the Weird Route, it’s only made even more effective. The sequence where Noelle talks to Kris in her room while you have to control the SOUL and make its way back into Kris’ body without them noticing is without a doubt, the single most powerful and well executed sequence in the entire game. As a reminder, I’m not playing through the Weird Route myself, I just watched this part on YouTube, but it still got to me. The sheer despair and disgust I felt during this reminds me a lot of last year’s popular indie horror game Mouthwashing, where you commit horrible acts through another person and you have to witness the effects of what you’re doing firsthand. The difference here is that while Mouthwashing forces you to perform the actions of a terrible person, in Deltarune’s Weird Route, you ARE the terrible person, and you’re forcing Kris to commit the horrible act of further establishing control over Noelle, as Kris jams the thorn ring back onto her finger.

The subsequent scene of Kris throwing the SOUL into the trash can in Noelle’s bathroom, and then proceeding to angrily kick the utter living shit out of it really hammers that fact home. What you are doing in the Weird Route is utterly despicable. Chances are if you’re currently playing through the Weird Route, you didn’t even learn it exists until you heard about it online after your original playthrough, so you’re only playing through it because you want to see all that the game has to offer for yourself. You don’t care about what you’re doing to these characters, or how you’re hurting them. You don’t care about the message the game is trying to convey to you. You just want to know what happens. While the effectiveness of Undertale’s Genocide Route has often been debated since that game’s release, I think that Deltarune’s Weird Route easily outclasses it in that regard… and the game’s not even finished yet! If I were playing through the Weird Route, I might’ve been able to stomach the stuff in Chapter 2, but there’s no way I’d be able to play through the rest of the Weird Route myself after this part.

Moving on to something way more positive, I finally get to talk about Gerson, my new favorite character in the game. Gerson the late father of Pastor Alvin, who passed away before the start of Deltarune’s story. In life, he was a teacher in Hometown, as well as a fantasy fiction writer who was known for the series “Lord of the Hammer”. Gerson is brought back to life in the Dark World after its power to give life to physical objects is imbued within a memorial containing Gerson’s remains. Gerson was also a minor character in Undertale. He could be found tending to a shop in the Waterfall region, and was a hero to monsterkind known as “The Hammer of Justice”. The most notable thing about his appearance in Undertale is that the area where he can be found has a mural on it which depicts the Delta Rune, foreshadowing Toby Fox’s plans for the game Deltarune all the way back in Undertale.

Gerson is the embodiment of this Chapter’s primary messages. While he comes off as this incompetent and feeble old man at first, every action he takes is for the sake of imparting a lesson onto our three young heroes, despite the fact that he barely knows them. This goes to show how much Gerson cares about young people. One of my favorite scenes with Gerson, the one that made me come to adore him, is the Tea Party he holds after you make your way through the dark maze while trying to find a piece of the song needed to open up the passageway where the Justice Axe is. He enthusiastically listens to how Susie animatedly tells him about the trio’s adventures so far, and after she leaves to continue more hero work, he comments on how there “Ain’t no better story than one told with sparkling eyes. She ain’t got no fear, that one. Doubt, irony, that’s what poisons your story….”. Gerson wants our protagonists to value themselves, believe in their potential and capabilities, and to have the perseverance and the will to write their own future. This is why he destroys some of the Prophecy panels that can be found within the Sanctuary, as he doesn’t want our heroes to resign to a future that they believe is predetermined for them.

Throughout the Chapter, Gerson mainly tries to connect with Susie in particular, and although she’s extremely resistant at first, it’s through the connection he develops with her that the emotional crux of Gerson’s character is established. Susie doubts in herself almost the entire Chapter, but Gerson is constantly trying to uplift her and show her what her true potential is, like when he appears after the Jackenstein fight to show Susie that her efforts in improving her ability to heal weren’t in vain. The secret boss battle between him and Susie is a culmination of all of the lessons that Gerson is trying to impart onto Susie, as well as the Player. Throughout the entire fight, he highlights the importance of perseverance, facing the difficult challenges life throws at you head on, and encouraging Susie as well as the Player to write our own stories, and not let anyone or anything tell you otherwise. This is why during this fight, Gerson turns the SOUL green and locks it in place, it’s more than just an homage to the Undyne fight from Undertale. Gerson is far from the most difficult secret boss in the game, especially when compared to the Roaring Knight fight in the previous Chapter, but I think it’s still the best secret boss fight in the game because of how it demonstrates Susie’s growth as a character thanks to the lessons that he teaches, as well as how successfully defeating Gerson enhances certain plot threads in the rest of the Chapter, such as when you fight the statue in the second Dark Sanctuary, or during this Chapter’s final boss battle, when Gerson appears at the very end to give the heroes the last bit of determination they need to put the Titan down, proving that despite what the Prophecy says, the three heroes are more than capable of defeating destiny.

As someone that grew up without much in terms of encouragement following my dreams, and as someone with aspirations of writing fiction, Gerson embodies the type of person that I want to become in life. The kind that’s not afraid to write their own story, and one that actively provides the encouragement to younger people that I never got when I was their age. I don’t have the answers to healing the world, but I do genuinely believe the actions Gerson displays in Deltarune are a huge key in raising and establishing a better future for society.

The Holiday household scenes and Gerson were the biggest talking points of Chapter 4 I wanted to address, and this Pastebin is starting to get rather long, but I do want to address a few more aspects of the Chapter in a rapid fire fashion:

The scenes towards the end of Chapter, where Susie sees the Prophecy’s conclusion and Ralsei reacts in such a panicked fashion to it almost made me cry. At this point, I think the ”Ralsei is evil” theorists should be ashamed of their words and deeds (/j). Ralsei isn’t evil. While we don’t know his origins, I do think that Ralsei was brought into existence with the knowledge he has for the purposes of simply guiding the Player along the intended path of Deltarune’s narrative, and that’s the nature of his suspicious actions. He only does what he was created to do, and he doesn’t want to hurt his only friends with the truth. I want to believe the events of this Chapter have instilled within Ralsei the will to carve out his own future with those he cares about.

Chapter 4 has several hints that make it clear what the next Chapter is going to be about: it’s going to focus on Asgore and will likely take place in a Dark World created within his flower shop. Asgore actually has a couple of hidden scenes at the Holiday house during the sequence where you take control of the SOUL and pilot it through the vents. They hint at his connection with Carol and his desire to prove to Toriel “what really happened”. I assume he’s talking about what happened to Dess. Considering the Chapter ends with Sans boning Kris’ mom (not really, but I couldn’t resist making a skeleton pun), the Prophecy panel that states “THE FLOWER MAN,TRAPPED IN ASYLUM”, and Gerson’s comment on Chapter 5 being “The Field of Pink and Gold. The vast garden is charred in an inferno of jealousy.”, I’m very curious if Sans will play a part in this Chapter’s narrative, and if he might end up facing Asgore’s jealous fury.

The last thing I want to comment on is Chapter 4’s surprise SECOND secret boss: “Mike”. Mike was an unknown character mentioned only a single time by Spamton during Chapter 2. When conversing to Kris about being friends, Spamton has a sudden emotional outburst, one where he claims that together, the two of them don’t need anyone, including “Mike”, and at the mention of his name, Spamton becomes solemnly quiet.  There’s also a hidden page on the Deltarune website where you can find a journal entry of sorts written by Spamton, and on this page, he vows revenge against Tenna, saying that he and “EVERYONE” is going to pay. “EVERYONE EXCEPT… …Mike…”. These two mentions of the character Mike sent the fanbase of Deltarune into a frenzy, with many people coming up with all sorts of theories as to Mike’s identity in the years since Chapter 2’s release, all of which have varying degrees of ridiculousness.

In Chapter 3, Tenna constantly calls out to Mike like he’s a technician or sound guy of some kind, and has him transition between the various TV sets over the course of the entire Chapter, but we never see or encounter Mike at all. After finishing Chapter 4, if you reload your save, you’ll unlock a magic light in the third Dark Sanctuary that you can use to warp back to the Castle Town Dark World. If you go to the third floor of the castle, where Tenna’s room is, you’ll find a new room dedicated to this mysterious Mike, which is where the boss fight takes place.  I really like this fight from a mechanics perspective. On PC, it uses the mouse and microphone in really creative ways, unlike anything that’s been seen in Deltarune so far. It’s how Mike's reveal is handled where I’ve got some mixed feelings. I thought the reveal itself was funny, honestly. Mike is actually just a trio of common enemies that could be found in the TV World, who have been playing the role of Mike and doing the things Tenna orders Mike to do in order to keep Tenna happy. After defeating them, you have a conversation where they confess to everything. No one really knows who Mike is or if he even ever existed. One of the enemies, the Pippin, starts going crazy and having a breakdown in front of a case board, trying to figure out who the real Mike even is, and where the origin of Mike even came from.

It’s the enemy going nutty over Mike’s origin that I take issue with. The way he frantically loses his mind feels like Toby Fox taking a not-so-subtle jab at his admittedly over-enthusiastic fanbase. While you could view this as just a bit of fun, it also feels a bit mean-spirited to the people who have been discussing and theorizing Deltarune’s story in the years it's taking for Toby Fox and his team to finish the game. As a wannabe writer myself, I would be honored to have people passionately discussing and theorizing my work to the same extent that people do with Toby Fox and his work, so implementing something like this into the game really rubs me the wrong way. I’m sure some folks will think that I’m taking it too seriously, and I don’t blame them. The more I think about it, it's hard to imagine Toby doing anything intentionally malicious towards his fanbase, I won’t lie. Maybe I really am taking it too seriously.